Old School RuneScape gets one of 2025's first Steam review bombs after survey gauges in-game ads and price hikes: "To read this review, please upgrade to the Deluxe package"
A RuneScape and Old School RuneScape player survey sent by developer Jagex which floated hypothetical but radical changes to the way both MMOs handle premium membership subscriptions, including tiers with in-game ads and exclusive benefits, sparked a firestorm of player backlash and protest. Despite quick attempts from Jagex CEO Phil Mansell (Mod Pips) to assure players that these changes aren't actually happening, that outrage has now spilled over to Steam in one of the year's first true-blue review bombs.
At the time of writing, Old School RuneScape's recent Steam reviews have dropped to 58% positive – a fair bit lower than the game's overall rating of 87% positive. There was a small but noticeable uptick in negative reviews on January 16 with 16 negative reviews, and that's more than quadrupled today with 76 negative reviews. It's a small salvo by review bombing standards, and 92 angry Steam users aren't going to move the needle at Jagex HQ – or more pertinently, at its corporate owner, because again, the game's overall rating is unphased – but it goes to show how hopping mad the community has been.
Still, this was enough to put a big ol' red line on the game's Steam graph, and the OSRS community seems to be wearing that red line like war paint. A Reddit post sharing word of the "Mixed" recent reviews seems to have prompted more players to reverse their positive review or write a new negative one of their own as the community continues to shut down the proposed membership ideas.
As a quick refresher, the most unpopular ideas among the various survey variants included enhanced account security and player support locked behind more expensive membership tiers, access to exclusive members world, and mobile-only access or in-game advertisements for cheaper tiers. Many negative Steam reviews have lampooned the survey's verbiage, yielding such classics as:
"To read this review, please upgrade to the Deluxe package for a premium fee of £2.99 extra per month," one user
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